WolfeStrike (De Wolfe Pack Generations #2) - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,7

flowers on top of the disturbed earth.

Two small bundles from two small sisters left behind.

When he realized he was looking at Jane’s grave, all of Tor’s strength seemed to leave him. The control that he held so carefully was gone and he sank to his knees, feeling a lump in his throat. He was a man unused to emotion but, at this moment, he was feeling things he’d never felt before. This was not what he had expected when he had returned to Lioncross this day and the blow to his soul was almost more than he could take.

“Oh… Janie,” he murmured. “Lady de Lohr told me what happened. Forgive me, Janie. Forgive me for telling you not to send word to me while I was away. I wish you had. God, I wish you had, but your obedience cost you the right to have me with you as you breathed your last. It cost you the right to have my comfort and I can never express my sorrow and regret. I should not have been so harsh with you. I only thought… I did not wish to be distracted because I wanted to return whole and safe to you. I swear to you that it was my only thought.”

He was met with silence. The hollow echo of the cold stone walls and the icy fingers of the earth reaching up through the ground grasping at him, caused him to feel that iciness in his heart. His grief threatened to consume him but, even above that, all he could feel was unmitigated anger at himself for being stubborn enough and foolish enough to tell his wife that he was beyond her reach during a time when he should have been at her side every moment of the day.

He was absolutely right. Her obedience of his directive had caused her to die without his comfort. Lady de Lohr had said that Jane had writhed with pain as she struggled to bring forth a child that could not, and would not, be born. What terror and agony she must have felt knowing that she couldn’t deliver the child. Surely she would have known that towards the end, realizing that nothing she could do would push that babe from her body.

Jane died alone, without the love or comfort of her husband, and with only Lady de Lohr and the physic as company.

That knowledge was beginning to eat him up inside.

His head fell forward into his hands, and he sat there a moment with his eyes closed and his hands over his face as he tried not to envision Jane breathing her last and knowing her husband would not come. His face would not be the last one she ever saw. It was a horrible ending for a kind, pretty, and gentle soul, one who had captured Tor’s attention even as a girl.

Tor had known Jane since his arrival at Lioncross Abbey, as she had been a ward of the House of de Lohr. In that sense, they had grown up together, and he had been given the privilege of years of knowing Jane. She wasn’t like the other girls who followed Lady de Lohr around and learned from her direction. She wasn’t flighty or gossipy, and that was always something he had appreciated in her. She had her moments of wisdom, her moments of stubbornness, but mostly, she had her moments of brilliance and those were moments he was very much going to miss. When he’d been at Goodrich, he’d missed her, but never as much as he did at this very moment, knowing she wasn’t going to return.

And then there was their child.

Given the size of the babe and the fact that Jane had been too weak and too small to push it out, he was positive that it had been a boy. A son of the House of de Wolfe that would never know his destiny. It would not be the first child of de Wolfe that did not know his destiny, and it probably would not be the last, but this particular tragedy hit closer to home to Tor than the other instances.

He’d had his share of death when it came to young males in the family.

When Tor had been a youth, he had lost a younger sister and youngest brother in a tragic accident that also took his mother’s life. As a result, his father had fled the tragedy, unable to face his grief or his guilt. Tor and